LogFAQs > #889553359

Antifar posted...

Because in the 16 years since, I think most Democrats have come to recognize the war on terror and the buildup of the national security state as bad things.

not their elected officials, though, for the most part

Antifar posted...

Furthermore, Schumer here isn't actually referencing those things; he's hoping that people have forgotten that's how Bush and the country actually responded to 9/11, in favor of a sanitized "post-9/11 coming together."

I think it's more of a respectability politics thing, as described in this article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/04/how-liberals-fell-in-love-with-the-west-wing

The lack of any serious attempts to change anything reflect a certain apolitical tendency in this type of politics, one that defines itself by its manner and attitude rather than a vision of the change it wishes to see in the world. Insofar as there is an identifiable ideology, it isnt one definitively wedded to a particular program of reform, but instead to a particular aesthetic of political institutions. The business of leveraging democracy for any specific purpose comes second to how its institutional liturgy and processes look and, more importantly, how they make us feelvirtue being attached more to posture and affect than to any particular goal. Echoing Sorkins 1995 film The American President (in many ways the progenitor of The West Wing) it delights in invoking seriousness and the supposedly hard-headed pragmatism of grownups.

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He would make his mark, if not on this tree, then on that wall; if not with teeth and claws, then with penknife and razor.